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ON THE TRACK OF 



«THE 

QOMETIME about the year 1850 the Ameri- 
U can musical myth known as « The Arkansas 
Traveler » came into vogue among fiddlers. 
It is a quick reel tune, with a backwoods 
story talked to it while played, that caught 
the ear at «side shows" and circuses, and 
sounded over the trodden turf of fair grounds. 
Bands and foreign-bred musicians were above 
noticing it, but the people loved it and kept 
time to it, while tramps and sailors carried 
it across seas to vie merrily in Irish cabins 
with « The Wind that Shakes the Barley » and 
((The Soldier's Joy.)) With or without the 
dialogue, the music was good for the humor, 
and it would have shown to the musical an- 
tiquary, if he had noticed it, the boundary line 
between the notes of nature and the notes 
of art as clearly as (( Strasburg )) or (( Prince 
Eugene » or <( The Boyne Water » or (( Dixie.)) 
It lost nothing where showmen caught it 
from Western adventurers in the days before 
the Union Pacific Railroad, and gained vogue 
in the hands of negro minstrels, who, if they 
touched up the dialogue, never gave the 
flavor of cities and theaters to the outdoor 
tune. When the itinerant doctor made a stage 
of his wagon-top of a Saturday night, it 
helped the sale of quack medicines m the 
village square, and there was a tapping of 
feet in the crowd under the torches when a 
blackened orchestra set the tune going from 
fiddle to fiddle. 

I learned of the myth nearly thirty years 
ago from Major G. D. Mercer, who had brought 
it from the Southwest in the pioneer days and 
played the tune on the violin as it should be 
played to the dialogue. 

First there comes a slow, monotonous saw- 
ing of the notes, which prepares one, as the 
curtain rises, for a scene in the backwoods 
of Arkansas. 

The SUM is setting over the plains. A be- 
lated horseman in coonskin cap, and well 
belted with pistol and bowie-knife, rides up 
to a squatter cabin to ask a night's lodging. 
By the door of a rotting shanty sits a ragged 
man astride of a barrel, slowly scraping out 
the notes you hear. There are children in 
the background, and a slatternly woman 
stands on the threshold. The man on the 
barrel plays away, paying no attention to the 
visitor, and the dialogue begins. 



ARKANSAS TRAVELER." 

n 

((Hello, stranger!)) says the horseman. 

(( Hello yourself! )) 

((Can you give me a night's lodging?)) 

(( No room, stranger.)) 
The playing goes on. 

((Can't you make room?)) 

((No, sir; it might rain.)) 

((What if it does rain?)) 

(( There 's only one dry spot in this house, 
and me and Sal sleeps on that.)) 

The playing continues for some time. Then 
the horseman asks: 

((Which is the way to the Red River 
Crossing?)) 

The fiddler gives no answer, and the ques- 
tion is repeated. 

(( I 've lived hyar twenty years, and never 
knowed it to have a crossin'.)) 

The stranger then begins to tease, the tune 
still playing. 

(( Why don't you put a roof on the house? » 

((What?)) 

(( Why don't you put a roof on the house? » 

(( When it 's dry I don't want a roof; when 
it 's wet I can't.)) 

The tune goes on. 

(( What are you playing that tune over so 
often for?)) 

(( Only heard it yisterday. 'Fraid I '11 for- 
get it.)) 

((Why don't you play the second part 
of it?)) 

(( I 've knowed that tune ten years, and it 
ain't got no second part.)) 

The crisis of the story has come. 

(( Give me the fiddle,)) says the stranger. 

The man hands it to him, and a few mo- 
ments of tuning are needed as a prelude to 
what follows, which has been immortalized in 
the popular print here sho^vn, known as (( The 
Turn of the Tune.)) 

When the stranger strikes up, turning 
away into the unknoMm second part with the 
heel-tingling skill of a true jig-player, the 
whole scene is set in motion. The squatter 
leaps up, throws out his arms, and begins a 
dance; the dog wags his tail; the children cut 
capers; and the ((old woman)) comes out, 
twisting her hard face into a smile. 

(( Walk in, stranger,)) rings the squatter's 
voice. (( Tie up your horse 'side of ol' Ball. 
Give him ten ears of corn. Pull out the demi- 



708 



THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 



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((THE ARKANSAS TRAVELER.)) 
A version arranged for the piano by Mr. P. D. Benham, eciitor of (( The Arkansas Traveler » of Chicago. 



John and drink it all. Stay as long as you 
please. If it rains, sleep on the dry spot.» 

The legend, like all myths, has many 
variants. Mr, Benham, editor of the Chi- 
cago « Arkansas Traveler,)) and Mr. T. R, 
Cole of Charleston, West Virginia, have 
given me versions with more varied dia- 
logues; but the colloquy as to night's lodg- 
ing, roof, and tune remains about the same, 
and the student of folk-lore is left to trace 



its threads of fancy in whatever directions 
they lead. 

I found, to my surprise, the episode of the 
roof among the memorabilia of York Harbor, 
Maine, ^ where the legend exists that about 
1832 Betty Potter and Esther Booker lived on 
the dividing line between York and Kittery, 
in a cabin with a large hole in the roof. One 

^ (( Gorgeana and York,)) by Alexander Emery, 1874, 
p. 207. 



ON THE TRACK OF ((THE ARKANSAS TRAVELER.)) 



709 



rainy day some ramblers, finding the women 
boring holes in the floor to let through the 
drip, asked the following questions and got 
the following answers: 

(( Why don't you mend the hole in the roof, 
Miss Potter?)) 

((Can't do it; it rains so.)) 

(( Why don't you do it when it don't rain? » 

(( No need of it then.)) 

(( The Arkansas Traveler )) is not mentioned 
among the border anecdotes in (( Beyond the 
Mississippi,)) by A. D. Richardson,^ nor in 
Burton's (( Cyclopedia of Wit and Humor,» - 
and Professor Child of Harvard told me, when 
I wrote to him about it in 1884, that he had 
made no study of the ballad-like myth. But it 
must have traveled to Ireland somewhere in 
the fifties, as Daniel Sullivan, a famous fiddler 
who played it for me at 815 Albany street, 
Boston, in 1885, had probably learned it when 
a young man at Limerick. 

There may be many other stories and fid- 
dle tunes with which it might be compared, 
though I have heard only one, called ((The 
Lock Boat after the Scow » (with the music as 
follows), played on the violin, and told me by 
Mr. George Long of Doylestown, Pennsyl- 
vania, before 1880. 

Rather sloiv. 



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As a canal-boat approaches a lock after 
dark, the boatman's tune, played slowly on 
the fiddle, sounds above the noise of the 
sluice and the tinkle of mule-bells. When 
the mules have passed, the boat comes into 
place as the barefooted lock-boy skips over 
the gliding rope. Then the tune stops for the 
following dialogue between boatman and boy. 

(( Got the gate shut behind there ? )) 

(( Yes.)) 

(( How many laps did you take? )) 

(( Three.)) 

(( Are the mules on the tow-path?)) 

(( Yes.)) 

((Are you ready?)) 

((All ready.)) 

((Let her come." 

1 Bliss & Co., New York, 1867. 
2 D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1858. 



Then comes the quick turn of the tune to 
the rush of the water, while the boat settles 



Very fast. ^ 




quickly down into the lock. When she rests 
on the low level the notes cease for more 
questions and answers. 

(( Is the gate open ahead ? » 

(( Yes.)) 

(( Is the rope clear of the bridge ? )) 

(( All clear.)) 

(( Mules on the tow-path ? » 

(( Yes.)) 

(( Out of the way, then. Gee-e-ed up! )) 

And the boat glides away, as she came, to 
the swinging music. 

The farther we travel north the more apt 
are we to hear the (( Arkansas )) of the (( Trav- 
eler )) made to rhyme with the word (( Matan- 
zas )) ; but he who feels the true inspiration of 
' the tune sympathizes with the action of the 
State legislature at Little Rock, which put an 
end to the (( Kansas-ing » of the name in 1881 
by making the last syllable rhyme with raw and 
setting the accent on Ark; or with Profes- 
sor William Everett, who stood up and pub- 
licly thanked a gentleman for saying (( Arkan- 
saw)) at a dinner in Washington. There the 
wish to rhyme it with ((Kansas)) had been 
so strong about 1860 that two congressmen 
from the State had to be addressed by the 
Speaker of the House as ((the gentleman 
from Arkansas)) and ((the gentleman from 
Arkansaw )) respectively. 

When we seek to trace back the legend to 
its own country, a surprise is in store for us. 
To learn from certain authorities in Arkansas 
that the myth is discountenanced there by a 
strong State feeling argues ill for our enter- 
prise; and it throws an unexpected serious- 
ness over the situation to be told that the 
dialogue at the cabin is (( a misrepresentation 
and a slur,)) and that the hero of the story, 
pursuing (( a strange errand of misconcep- 
tion,)) has (( checked immigration » and (( done 
incalculable injury to the State.)) To get at 
the bottom of the matter in a friendly way in- 
volves a discussion as to what induces set- 
tlers to settle, what people generally do with 
their ballads and myths, and what the Cali- 
fornian meant who recently declared that the 




SCENE IN THE BACKWOODS OF ARKANSAS, 

Traveler, ■ to Spatter- can you give me sojne refreshments and a mghts lodging ' Squatier no sir haveni got any room.nominj to eat Fiddles away Traveler ^ihen 

does this road go to ' Sguattetit dont go anywhere, it stays here SiiU fiddling Travel ec- why dont you play ihe rest of itel miie ■■ Squaticr. dont know U taveler. ^«^e gw me ffie Fidd le, plays 



demise of Bret Harte would be an event of the 
highest possible advantage to California. All 
of this produces an atmosphere of solemnity, 
which, taking possession of our spirits, might 
threaten to become serious, were we not in- 
clined, after mature consideration, to take 
advantage of the best remedy at hand, sim- 
ple but sure. This consists in asking in one 
of our old friends to tell the story and to play 
the tune. 

In the face of these difficulties it is no easy 
matter to learn more than that Colonel San- 
ford C. Faulkner (born in Scott County, Ken- 
tucky, March 3, 1803; died in Little Rock, 
August 4, 1874) was the originator of the 
story, its hero, and in fact the Arkansas 
Traveler himself. 

Mr. Benham tells me that in the State cam- 
paign of 1840, Colonel Faulkner, Hon. A. H. 
Sevier, Governor Fulton, Chester Ashley, and 
Governor Yell, traveling through the Boston 
Mountains (Mr. S. H. Newlin, of « The Ar- 
kansas Farmer,)) Little Rock, says it was 
Colonel « Sandy)) Faulkner and Captain Al- 
bert Pike in Yell County), halted at a squat- 
ter's cabin for information. Colonel « Sandy,)) 
who was the spokesman, and no mean fiddler 
himself, had some sort of bantering talk with 
the squatter, who was sawing at a tune on 



a violin, and finally played the second part 
of it for him. Out of this, say my informants, 
grew the « good story )) which the colonel, on 
his return, was called upon to tell at a dinner 
given in the once famous bar-room near the 
Anthony House in Little Rock. Years after- 
ward he told it again at a State banquet in 
New Orleans, when the Governor of Louisiana 
handed him a violin and asked him to regale the 
company with the then celebrated narrative. 

In New Orleans his fame abode with him, 
for Mr, Benham adds the curious bit of in- 
formation that at the old St. Charles Hotel a 
special room was devoted to his use, bearing 
over the door in gilt letters the words « The Ar- 
kansas Traveler.)) Mr. N. L. Prentiss, editor 
of the Topeka (Kansas) "Commonwealth,)) 
says that Colonel Faulkner's violin was of- 
fered for sale in Little Rock in 1876 for one 
hundred dollars. 

Mr. George E. Dodge of Little Rock wrote 
me in 1892, in contradiction of most of the 
above, that the story of Colonel Faulkner 
and the squatter was a pure fiction without a 
happening-place, « either invented by Faulk- 
ner or by some of his friends, who delighted 
in hearing him tell it and play the tune, and 
made him the central figure of it more for a 
joke than anything else.)) 




r0BlJ5MEI> ftt CURlUQl4.IV£3 



US KASSUXStUEVmiRS 



TRAVELER PUYING THE "ARKANSAWTRAVELER" 
Squatter -Why stranger fve been trying four years to git the turn of that nine, come nght in ' Johnny take the horse and feed him I We |ii npthe best Com 
cate you can puke ' Sally make up the best bed ' He Vun play the tumof that tune: come nght m and playit all through stranger. You km lodge withusa month free of charge. 



But however that might have been, a local 
artist, Edward Washburn by name, once liv- 
ing at Dardanelle, Arkansas, was so much 
impressed with the story that he took it into 
his head, about 1845-50, to paint the origi- 
nals of the prints here copied. As he then 
lived with the family of Mr. Dodge in Little 
Rock, he made the children pose for his 
sketches. Mr. G. E. Dodge was tlie boy in 
the ash-hopper, «and we had great times," 
says he, now fifty years after, « posing for his 
figures of the squatter's children. I was con- 
stantly with him in his studio, and in fact 
felt that I was helping to paint the picture. 
The picture representing (The Turn of the 
Tune ) was an afterthought. The boy in the 
ash-hopper gets down from his perch and 
takes the stranger's horse. The children as- 
sume different attitudes. But we never cele- 
brated the completion of the second paint- 
ing as we had that of the first. Poor Wash- 
burn sickened and died, and the unfinished 
work stood upon the easel until it was stowed 
away. His executor afterward had it finished 
by some one else, and then the two began to 
make their appearance in the form of cheap 
prints.)) 

Another picture, by another painter, which 
hung in the Arkansas Building at the Centen- 



nial Exhibition at Philadelphia, had been 
worked up from photographs of Mr. Dodge, 
his brothers and sisters, lent to the painter 
by the boy in the ash-hopper. 

The tune has a strong flavor of the cotton- 
field « hoe-down,)> but I have obtained no sat- 
isfactory information as to its origin. Mr. 
Benham is sure that it was not composed by 
Colonel Faulkner, and has heard, perhaps to 
the surprise of musical antiquaries, that it 
was either written by Jose Tasso, a famous 
violin-player who died in Kentucky some 
years ago, or produced by him from an old 
Italian melody. When we come to investigate 
this relation of Tasso to « The Arkansas Trav- 
eler)) the whole question becomes confused by 
repeated assertions that Tasso not only com- 
posed the music, but was himself the original 
of the myth, leaving Faulkner out of the 
question altogether. 

In fact, common opinion on the Ohio River 
awards the authorship to Tasso hardly less 
positively than on the lower Mississippi the 
authorship is given exclusively to Faulkner; 
and it would not be a popular task to try to 
convince the « old-timers )) of Maysville, Point 
Pleasant, and Gallipolis that Faulkner, of 
whom they never heard, or any one else except 
their oft-quoted favorite, had anything to do 



712 



THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 



with the origin of the myth. Their recollec- 
tions make it certain that Tasso was well 
known along the river as a concert and dance 
player when the tune came into vogue. Robert 
Clarke, the publisher, heard him play it at 
John Walker's brew-house in Cincinnati in 
1841 or 1842, and he told Richard R. Rey- 
nolds and Albert Crell, who played with him 
at a ball at the Burnet House on New Year's 
night in 1849, that he himself was the author 
of music and story. Mr. Curry, who used to 
play the flute to him when he was ill, heard 
him repeat the statement about 1850; but 
Tasso's grandson, Mr. F. G. Spinning, does not 
think that his grandfather ever traveled in 
Arkansas, and it may be doubted whether 
the jocose performer, who from dramatic ne- 
cessity was led to make himself the hero of 
the story, ever claimed the authorship with- 
out winking one eye. 

Whether he could equal Faulkner at the 
dialogue or not, he seems to have brought 
dowTi the house with the tune in a way to 
outdo all competitors; and one anecdote after 
another connects him with it in the days of 
the glory of Mississippi steamboats and when 



Colt's revolvers first came down the river. 
One after another, these tales vouch for a 
fame so attractive that the listener is half 
willing to give up Faulkner and let Tasso 
walk off with the honors. 

Yet the latter, who spoke broken English 
until the day of his death in Covington, Ken- 
tucky in 1887, was born in the city of Mexico, 
of Italian parents, was educated in France, 
and was, it is said, a pupil of Berlioz; so that - 
it may be questioned whether, even if, as al- .; 
leged, he came to Ohio in the thirties, he ' 
could have so steeped himself in the spirit of 
the American West as to produce the story. 
The investigation might lead us much further, 
but it is doubtful if more facts gathered about 
the fable would add to its interest. 

It really matters little where the ((Trav- 
eler )» was born, whether in Yell County or in 
the Boston Mountains; whether, as Mr. Dodge 
asserts, it originated with Faulkner and his 
friends, or came from the humor of Tasso. 
Like all true creations of fancy, it eludes def- 
inite description and defies criticism, while 
the notes of the tune sound a gay disregard of 
boards of immigration and State statistics. 

H. C. Mercer. 



JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE. 

RECOLLECTIONS AND UNPUBLISHED LETTERS. 

BY THE AUTHOR OF ((HOME REMINISCENCES OF JOHN RANDOLPH.)) 




the year 1817 Mr. Francis W. 
Gilmer of Albemarle, one of the 
most accomplished scholars 
that Virginia has produced, 
published a small volume in 
which he gave sketches of sev- 
eral of the great orators of the day, among 
them John Randolph of Roanoke. A copy of 
this book was presented by the author to 
Mr. Randolph, who acknowledged the receipt 
of it in a long letter, which is now presented 
to the public for the first time; but in order 
that the reader may properly appreciate it, it 
is necessary to give first an extract from the 
book concerning Mr. Randolph's style of ora- 
tory. Mr. Gilmer wrote : 

The first time that I ever felt the spell of 
eloquence was when a boy standing in the 
gallery of the Capitol in the year 1808. It was 
on the floor of that House I saw rise a gentle- 
man who in every quality of his person, his 
voice, his mind, his character, is a phenome- 
non among men. ... He has so long spoken 



in parables that he now thinks in them. An- 
titheses, jests, beautiful conceits, with a striking 
turn and point of expression, flow from his lips 
with the same natural ease, and often with 
singular felicity of expression, as regular series 
of arguments foUoAV each other in the deduc- 
tion of logical thinkers. His invective, which 
is always piquant, is frequently adorned with 
the beautiful metaphors of Burke, and ani- 
mated by bursts of passion worthy of Chatham. 
Popular opinion has ordained Mr. Randolph 
the most eloquent speaker now in America. 

It has been objected to this gentleman that 
his speeches are desultory and unconnected. 
It is true ; but how far that may be a fault 
is another question. We are accustomed m 
America to look upon the bar as furnishin-' 
the best and nearly the only models of good 
speaking. In legal discussions a logical metli- 
od, accurate arrangement, and close concate- 
nation of arguments are essential, because the 
mode of reasoning is altogether artificial and 
the principles on which we rely positive and 
conventional. Not so in parliamentary debate . 
There questions are considered on prmeiples 
of general policy and justice ; and the topics 






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